Saqib Malik’s directorial debut Baaji is all set to hit the cinemas this Friday. Up until now, four songs have been released and one of them is none other than the Mehwish Hayat starrer ‘Gangster Guriya’ that has caused well, some controversy in the country.

Baaji’s ‘Gangster Guriya’ sparks controversy

Recently, the dance number started a debate over whether the song should be considered an empowerment anthem or a tribute to a woman owning and expressing her sexuality as she pleases. A lot was said and done. We presented a balanced picture of the whole scenario too, an excerpt of which is as follows:

“The song features empowering lyrics like ‘mann marzi ka apna maza hai‘ and ‘don’t touch me boy, mein nahi toy’ which seek to establish female control over their own body and actions. The title in itself is a rebellion, ‘Gangster Guriya’ inspires an image of a beautiful woman who won’t be silenced easily by anyone and can fight for herself. The music video also features Mehwish on top, looking tough and in charge of herself. While this seems like a step in the right direction, it evades the seemingly more effective route. Perhaps showing more intellectual, strong female leads with a good backstory would do better for women empowerment than scantily clad gyrating vixens.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=kkweRSdM0-4

YouTube star calls for a boycott of Baaji

The story, unfortunately, doesn’t end here. A YouTube star Chen-K, recently, took to his YouTube channel and urged the audience to dislike the song and boycott Baaji on the whole. Now, this was some 5 days ago and now it looks like the masses are responding to his call for as per reports and Mr. Chen K himself, ARY has removed the likes/dislikes number from their YouTube since the dislikes exceeded the likes by a huge margin. While we can’t see the dislike/like ratio we do see the negative comments underneath the original video which do paint a clear picture of the Youtubers popularity and response from the masses.

Chen-K in his interminable live videos urges his followers to not abuse Mehwish Hayat (talk about being holier than thou). He asks them to simply dislike the song and boycott the film. He then goes on to explain that whatever he is saying is not coming from a backward mind, rather logic (which is ironical since he, very very logically, explains in excruciating detail how item numbers such as these make the lower class people to watch porn?!?!?!). He further mentioned that he has seen the world and has even done ‘clubbing’ so he knows what he is talking about.

A final word

While everyone has a right to freedom of expression, it is important to keep the consequences of their words in mind, especially for influential social media stars such as Chen-K. Urging people to boycott a movie (that honestly seems to be one of the best we have had in so long) just because it features a woman being in charge of her own sexuality, without having any meaningful discourse with the audience can be a little too fatal for our nascent cinema industry.

What do you guys think of the whole situation? Let us know in the comments.